The Philippines is blessed with a very high biodiversity, including the plants living in its remaining forest cover. Trees alone comprise about 3500 species. Just to research on a species a day would take about 10 years to finish all of just the trees. Then there are still the shrubs, herbs, ferns etc. Through this blog we hope to introduce you to some important plants in the forest before they completely disappear because of habitat destruction.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Ang Maliliit na Bao ng Bitaog - The Shells of the Bitaog Fruit

I just learned how a familiar thing from my childhood was made! Remember sundot kulangot? If you take this literally you'll probably won't associate it with anything edible, much more something tasty. The sundot-kulangot is a popular Baguio pasalubong (edible souvenir). It is matamis na bao or coconut jam encased in small orb-like containers and fastened together with sticks of bamboo. I remember asking people going to Baguio to buy lots of this, and when they arrive, I get the kick out of poking the jam out their ball encasements. If you think of it it is much hassle eating them, but i still crave them. To people who still can't imagine it I have attached a picture of the delicacy.

I was talking to Ray Ong (the Philippine Star editor for Philippine Gardens) last week in the Philippine Native Plant Concervation Society's Christmas Party. He solved the long mystery of my child hood of what those ball encasements were made of. The good news is it came from the fruit of another native tree (but could also be seen in a lot of Asian countries), the bitaog. The bad news, he told me how they are made.

Bitaog (also called Palo Maria or dangkalan in some provinces) or Calophyllum inophyllum is a handsome tree growing near the coastal areas of Asian islands. Because it is easy to grow, it is commonly used as a park or landscape tree. I am not sure though how this coastal plant got to figure into the manufacturing of a highland delicacy, probably because Baguio is adjacent to a lot of coastal provinces like Pangasinan and La Union.

The part of bitaog used for sundot-kulangot are the fruits. The bitaog fruit is not palatable but the rigid shell is dried up. The fruit shell is then split into 2 and the lower part - without the stem - is used to encase small portions of cocojam (when the cocojam hardens it look like booger, hence the name). They get another non-stemmed half to enclose the jammed-up half, and sealed with red-colored paper. Several of these are then tied up using bamboo sticks braces.

In the UP Lantern Parade, I brought a few sticks of sundot-kulangot with me to share with some classmates. It was hard opening up each orb and scooping the jam out with bare fingers. Landscape Architect Nappy Navara taught us the right way to eat it. The bamboo stick braces are detached from the packaging and used as a poking stick and scoop for the 'kulangot'.

So what makes anything in this bad news? Some of these small home industries - that get to cook the cocojam and package them into sundot-kulangot - forget to wash the bitaog fruit casings. They get to pick them straight from the tree, dry them up and fill them up straight with the jam. So you now know what makes them so special. Maybe some of the flavor of the bitaog gets into them

3 comments:

Interesting! I came upon your blog when I was researching for tamanu oil resources here in PI. Bitaog tree happens to be the same tree where the highly priced tamanu oil is extracted. It's a sought after cosmetic ingredient because of its "scar healing" properties and is pretty much expensive in the market nowadays. And jfilac, the Tahitian Islanders used the fruit as an alternative for antibiotic medicine..hmm.

I came across tamanu oil and further surfing landed on this blog so it is available here in the Philippines I wonder if tamanu oil is marketed in another product name but am interested to know more where in Philippnes it is more grown.

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About Me

Hi! My name is Patrick Gozon and I am a plant enthusiast. I did my graduate thesis on the use of Philippine native trees and shrubs in landscape architecture. I hope to share with you interesting facts I learned and collected about Philippine native flora.